View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Maine Andean Past Volume 9 Article 4 11-1-2009 John Victor Murra (August 24, 1916 - October 16, 2006): An Interpretative Biography Monica Barnes American Museum of Natural History, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/andean_past Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Barnes, Monica (2009) "John Victor Murra (August 24, 1916 - October 16, 2006): An Interpretative Biography," Andean Past: Vol. 9 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/andean_past/vol9/iss1/4 This Obituaries is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Andean Past by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. JOHN VICTOR MURRA (AUGUST 24, 1916 - OCTOBER 16, 2006): AN INTERPRETATIVE BIOGRAPHY MONICA BARNES Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History BIBLIOGRAPHY BY DAVID BLOCK (University of Texas, Austin) and MONICA BARNES John Victor Murra at the 1958 Vassar College graduation. Graduate is Margaret Johnson-Gaddis; photograph by John Lane Studio, Poughkeepsie, New York, courtesy of Vassar College. INTRODUCTION many of the problems presented by his perilous times. These included Communism, John Murra’s life spanned the short McCarthyism, Fascism, war, anti-Semitism, and twentieth century. He was born during the First immigration. He faced and overcame them with World War and died more than five years after the tools of armed struggle, psychoanalysis, and the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York anthropological research, emerging as one of the and Washington. He personally encountered most influential Andeanists to date. His major ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009): 1-63. ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009) - 2 contributions to our understanding of how Murra discouraged scholars from studying prehispanic cultures, especially the Inca, the Spanish Colonial Period per se. To Murra, functioned economically, politically, socially, Spain’s Golden Age was a time of catastrophe and ecologically are set out in his doctoral for the indigenous peoples of the Americas. He dissertation (Murra 1956a), and in a long, oft- felt that intellectual effort in New World ethno- republished and re-worked series of short history should be concentrated on those early articles, book chapters, and published com- documents by eyewitnesses that could elucidate ments, usually in venues where peer review was prehispanic times. Following the leads of his not a constraint.1 He also made available a good Peruvian friends, the novelist, poet, and deal of the documentation supporting his anthropologist José María Arguedas3 and the interpretations (Guaman Poma 1980; Murra historian María Rostworowski,4 Murra recog- [editor] 1991; Ortiz de Zúñiga 1967, 1972). His nized the importance of visitas, colonial reports archaeological work is significant (Murra 1942, of official inspection tours. Several were 1955f, 1962, 1966a; Murra and Morris 1976; published or republished under his general Thompson and Murra 1966). Indeed, his first direction (Murra [editor] 1964, 1991, Ortiz de scholarly publication (Collier and Murra 1943), Zuñiga 1967, 1972). From the minute details based in part on his M.A. thesis (Murra 1942), available in visitas (some make house-by-house remains essential to an understanding of Ecua- inventories, while others contain information on dorian prehistory, and was last republished in regional shrine systems or economic production) 2007. The results of his Huánuco Project, Murra could discern large patterns in Incaic and officially called “A Study of Provincial Inca early colonial organization. Life”, although incompletely reported, never- theless are a major component of Inca studies. However, his greatest contribution is probably the insight that documents, the raw material of historical reconstructions, could be viewed from dorsed by Murra. Although Murra did not share Zuidema’s an anthropological perspective and integrated emphasis on religion, ritual, and symbolism, he respected into research incorporating archaeological evi- Zuidema’s scholarship and supported him with positive dence. Given that anthropology itself in the grant recommendations. mid-twentieth century was rather a-historical, 3 José María Arguedas Altamirano (1911-1969) is one of with emphasis on a timeless “ethnographic 2 Peru’s most famous writers in both Spanish and Quechua. present”, this was a stunning breakthrough. His fiction often explores the clashes between ethnic groups in early twentieth century Peru. Arguedas was director of Peru’s Casa de Cultura during part of the time 1 C.f. Lechtman and Wolf, n.d.; Murra 1958a, 1958b, John Murra directed field-work at Huánuco. Arguedas 1960a, 1961b, 1962, 1964a, 1964b, 1966b, 1972a, 1974a, died as a result of his second suicide attempt. 1974c, 1975a, 1976a, 1978b, 1978c, 1982a, 1982b, 1985a, 4 1985b, 1985c, 1985d, 1986a, 1987a, 1999, 2002a. For María Rostworowski Tovar de Diez Canseco (b. 1915) work by and about John Murra not incorporated into the spent her childhood in Peru, Poland, France, England, and text of this obituary see the bibliography that is part of this Belgium. In 1935 she returned to Peru, living on her special section on the life and work of John Victor Murra. father’s hacienda in Huánuco. She took courses taught by historian Raúl Porras Barrenechea at the Universidad 2 In stating this, I do not wish to diminish the importance Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. She has concentrated on of other scholars who simultaneously and independently the social, economic, and religious dimensions of the arrived at similar conclusions. In this respect, as in many prehispanic societies of the Peruvian coast. She is a others, the works of John H. Rowe and R. Tom Zuidema founder of the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and the are particularly noteworthy. Rowe’s close and sustained author of several books of collected essays and numerous study of colonial records was an approach strongly en- articles. 3 - Barnes: John V. Murra He was one of the first to appreciate that the pelago”. Thus, high altitude grasslands could Mestizo Peruvian chronicler and artist Guaman produce meat and animal fibers. At slightly Poma de Ayala was not a deranged malcontent, lower altitudes just below the upper limit for but rather a key reporter and insightful analyst plant cultivation tubers such as potatoes, oca, (Murra 1956a:7). Working with Rolena Adorno and ulluco were grown. Other crops, including (see Adorno’s contribution, this volume, pp. 77- quinoa, maize, beans, chilli peppers, lupines, 79) and native Quechua speaker Jorge (George) cotton, coca, and fruit were planted at still lower Urioste,5 Murra produced what has become the altitudes. Establishments in the tropical forests standard transcription of Guaman Poma’s Nueva on the eastern slopes of the Andes yielded crónica y buen gobierno (Guaman Poma de Ayala wood, feathers, and other forest products while 1980 [c.1616]). His contributions to Andean fish, seafood, and aquatic plants were obtained ethnohistory are immense.6 from lakes and the ocean, and salt and guano were collected where they occurred. Different Murra’s best known explanatory framework forms of land tenure and exchange are possible is his theory of “vertical complementarity” under such conditions, but Murra postulated which posits that Andean societies provided for that ethnic groups and polities controlled or themselves by managing disparate ecological shared at least some non-contiguous territory in niches. The steepness of the Andean terrain each important zone. Murra also made insures that ecological conditions often vary significant contributions to our understanding of greatly over relatively short distances. Because the role of craft production and state-sponsored no single ecozone can produce all that is settlement practices under the Incas (Murra necessary for subsistence, Andean ethnic groups 1958b, 1978c, 1982b). and states, according to Murra, maintained control of various zones, frequently not in the POLITICS, BUT NOT AS USUAL form of contiguous territory, but rather as strings of “islands” in an imagined “vertical archi- John Victor Murra was born Isak Lipschitz in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of imperial Russia. Murra’s father was raised in a Jewish orphanage 5 Jorge L. Urioste was born in Bolivia and is a native after his own father had died. Murra’s mother Quechua speaker. He is a Professor Emeritus of was a visually impaired teenager when she Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He married. Although both his parents were has collaborated with a number of people associated with Cornell University, most notably linguist Donald Solá Romanian Jews, Murra did not have a (1922-2008), anthropologist Frank Salomon (note 48), particularly religious upbringing. Murra’s father literature specialist Rolena Adorno and John Victor was anti-clerical due to his experiences in the Murra. Among his important publications are The orphanage. Nevertheless, Murra celebrated his Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Bar Mitzvah as a boy and in his later years he Andean Religions (with Frank Salomon; 1991) and the various Murra/Adorno/Urioste editions of Guaman Poma’s expressed a belief in God and God’s Nueva crónica . intervention in his life. 6 Murra 1946, 1948, 1956a, 1958a, 1958b, 1960a, 1961a, Murra